Senior revision time

Aftert the school exams it was apparent that the L2 Chemistry students are not yet anywhere near ready for their end of year external exams.

In repsonse to this I decided to drop the final internal that was slated, Oxidation and Reduction, in favour of spending the remaining class time on revision of the content of the external standards.

In class time students are allowed to choose their own specific area of the course to concentrate their revision. To aid and focus them at the start of each lesson I circulate in the class and ask them to give me their personal topic or success criteria for the hour they have in the classroom. Making them choose one specific thing to master in the hour seems to improve their focus for their learning and help break down the seemingly impossible task into smaller bits that are possible.

Chemistry in the real world

I have been on the mailing list for Compound Interest for a while now. It is a website that tracks chemical progress in the academic science world I find it useful as a filter for finding real world applications of chemistry that I can illustrate to my students.

 It also creates useful infographics of scientific and specialist chemical processes. In the past I have colour printed and laminated some of their infographics into posters for my wall, but I don't have enough space for them all, and the Science Department doesn't have the printing budget for me to continue to do so with every poster. I will continue to do so with the really useful ones, but I have been thinking about ways to showcase the varied and interesting things that Chemists do.

I now have a spot on my wall where I black and white print the weekly mailer titled "This Week In Chemistry". The spot is by the door where it is easy to browse at the end of the lesson, and is passed by each student as they leave.

In addition when an infographic about chemical research comes into my mailbox, rather than colour printing I am setting as the new wallpaper for the projector screen. In this way I can change it regularly without reference to cost.

Class differentiation in Level 2 Chemistry

For Term 3 I have split each Chemistry class into two groups. One group of the academically focussed students, and another of the students who are happy to just get their 14 credits. The academic kids are going to work on both remaining externals, and the others on one external.

Parents have been contacted to ensure that it is clear what their child is doing, and have been asked to respond to me to acknowledge that they are in agreement with the choice that they are making.



<Date>


<Parents>
<Postal Address>


Dear <Salutation>

Re : <First Name> <Last Name> <Class>

From this term in Chemistry, and for the remainder of the year the classes within the course has been split into two working groups. One group comprises the students who are planning to take Level 3 Chemistry in 2018, and may be planning a career or further study in which they may use Chemistry ("The L3/Career" group). The second group are students who have decided that Chemistry does not feature in their future plans, and are aiming to get enough credits at Level 2 to pass the course, but do not plan to take their study of Chemistry any further (dubbed the "I just want my credits" group). So far the students are self-selecting the group they want to be in.

The L3/Career group will be working at a quick pace through two Externally assessed Achievement Standards, 2.6 Chemical Reactivity, and 2.5 Organic Chemistry. It is necessary that this group is diligent about keeping up with the work, and this will require regular homework.

 The "I just want my credits" group will be spending their time learning Organic Chemistry and revising the 2.4 Atomic Structure and Bonding standard we covered last term.

All learning for externals should be completed in time for the school exams in Week 9 of Term 3. After the school exams we will tackle the final internally assessed standard 2.7 Oxidation and Reduction.

<First> has yet to choose a group. Please discuss with <First Name> which group <he> will select to be in to ensure that you and <he> are comfortable with his choice.  I also ask that you confirm that you are aware of <his> choice in a response to this email.

Yours faithfully,


<Teacher>
<TeacherEmail>

Solubility

Teaching solubility to L2Chem a student asked to see an example of an experiment I was telling them about. With consultation with SGSS we found an example of a non-polar substance requiring a non-polar solute to dissolve it.

The students were happy to be able to see all the range of polar and non-polar subtances acting as solvents and solutes as it rounded out their learning experience.

L2Chem start to year

I spent the first three weeks of the L2 Chemistry course reteaching ideas from L1 Science. It was brought home to me last year how unprepared some of the students are for L2, and how loose the entry criteria are to get into the class. I pretested and then re-tested the students. There was an improvement, but even so many students are still going to need a lot of extra support.

I have started the year with a letter home to all parents introducing myself and ensuring that they are aware that their student will have to work consistently all year to have a successful year in Chemistry. I also sent the letter by post to a few parents to ensure equity.

A big part of the homework this year is online revision and testing using the website BestChoice. I explained the point of this to parents and asked to be informed if this would be an issue so that I could make alternative arrangements for their child. I have at least one student for whom this will be an issue and have already discussed it with them. They are happy to come in to the tutorial time and have access to laptops then so they don't miss out on the learning opportunity.

Pre exam jitters

It is the L2 Chemistry exam today. I went to talk to my students before they went in. Most have been strategically picking which papers to do and focusing their efforts.
The students seem upbeat and were surprised and happy to see me, saying that I'm the only teacher who has been to see them before their exam. I encouraged them to come and see me afterwards to tell me how it went.

Success on resubs

I have been working with some of the chemistry students who failed achievement standards earlier in the year. All those who stayed in the class for the full year have managed to achieve all the credits they were entered into, which means they are entering exams with 10 Chemistry credits under their belt.
They are also all intending to do Chemistry next year. I am quite pleased with that even though I still don't know who is teaching the Level 3 next year.

The last students to get their assessments needed more practice time. For the repeats I gave them lots and lots of practice questions until they felt ready. Part of it has been the maturing of the students.

 This year I have identified the weaknesses that have come through from the Level 1 classes and I am planning how to ameliorate those at the start of the year to make the classes confident in their abilities from the start. Hopefully this will also address the relatively high attrition rate. Some of the attrition was due to bad course selection, but a few I think were because they felt discouraged when they didn't pass the first Achievement Standard.

Goggles!

L1SCE was doing a rates of reactivity experiment today. I must have used some variation on "Googles!" about 3-4 times a minute for the duration of the practical.
"put your goggles on"
"your goggles are less efficient when they are on your head"
"Do you value your goatee more than your eyes?"

Rethinking the programme

The formative for the Redox assessment has come back showing the students are not ready for the summative. I think I will need to reteach aspects, and give a lot more practice before many of the students are ready.
Coupled with the need for a number of them to repeat the other internals I am doubting if I will be able to get through the high number of credits that were initially planned. I have already removed a number of students from the final external assessment but now I am wondering if there will be enough time for the students who have been planning to do that assessment to complete it.